Product description

This morning Detective John Tallow was bored with his job. Then there was this naked guy with a shotgun, and his partner getting killed, and now Tallow has a real problem: an apartment full of guns. Old guns. Modified guns. Arranged in rows and spirals on the floor and walls. Hundreds of them. Each weapon is tied to a single unsolved murder. Which means Tallow has uncovered two decades' worth of homicides that no one knew to connect and a killer unlike anything that came before. Tallow's bosses don't want him to solve the case. The murderer just wants him to die. But there's a pattern hiding behind the deaths, and if Tallow can figure it out he might even make it out alive.

Author information

Warren Ellis is an award-winning creator of graphic novels whose work includes Fell, Ministry of Space, Planetary, Transmetropolitan and Red, which was adapted into a film starring Bruce Willis, and the author of the novel Crooked Little Vein. He has also written for many of Marvel Comics' top series including the Avengers, Iron Man and the X-Men. He lives in Southend with his family. Visit his website at www.warrenellis.com or follow him on Twitter @warrenellis.

Review quote

A magnificently entertaining gun held to the head of the crime thriller genre Guardian GUN MACHINE sees Ellis grab hold of the mainstream by its windpipe and demand acceptance; a perfectly flawless crime book with a feral glint in its eye. Independent on Sunday If only other police procedurals had half the gumption and imaginative power of this novel. Big Issue A dazzling oasis in the desert of grimly identical police procedurals Financial Times Sick, slick and very funny...[Ellis] doesn't need pictures to create his gripping, grave new world Daily Telegraph '[Ellis] turns to conventional crime fiction with startling success...powerful writing and vast imagination' The Times Ellis tackles the police procedural, although it's bloodier and more intriguing than any episode of Law & Order or CSI, and arms it with gallows humor, high-tension action scenes and an unlikely hero. USA Today Just about everything in GUN MACHINE, Warren Ellis's dark but pleasingly quirky crime thriller, is a little bit off, not quite what you'd expect...In his way Tallow is almost as weird as the hunter, and yet he's also oddly endearing, so single-minded you can't help rooting for him. New York Times Never stops to draw breath. It's a monster of a book, bowel-looseningly scary in places, darkly uproarious in others, and remorseless as the killer who hunts in its pages...particularly good, even by the high standards of a Warren Ellis tale. Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing Hellish fun Ian Rankin A mad police procedural just north of the border of dark fantasy. Delightful. William Gibson GUN MACHINE never lets go of the reader and never flags in its relentless pace. In the course of 300 tightly wound pages, Ellis unloads a full clip of ideas, black humor, character, and copper-sheathed action scenes. Every sentence is a bullseye. Joe Hill Underneath the pyrotechnic prose lies a perfectly paced mystery thriller. Ellis gets it so right. Mike Carey Sharp, dangerous, beautifully observed... Some things about Warren Ellis's writing never change, including - I imagine - his ability to make even maniacs worry that they're boringly sane. Jon Courtenay Grimwood GUN MACHINE is packing heat: wonderfully demented misfits, killer dialogue, a helluva story. Warren Ellis is a twisted genius and this is his grittiest, sexiest, and best work by far. Lauren Beukes GUN MACHINE redraws the crime map of Manhattan; Ellis's bizarre, febrile imagination and mordant wit makes a serial killer thriller for a new century. Charles Stross